Series/Festivals

Week of April 10, 2002

Independent Visions. Webster University presents a series devoted to short-subject films. The first of two installments features the work of Sarah Jane Lapp. Lapp's films are hard to pin down. She uses documentary techniques, animation, monologues and striking images to make short works that skip over lines between realism and fantasy. Some are puzzling; others startle with their directness. The longest (and best) of the batch, Happy Are the Happy (Your Best Joke, Please), gives a compellingly humane and -- as the title suggests - unexpectedly witty account of European history, linking recollections of concentration-camp survivors to those who have lived through more recent turmoil in Bosnia. Director Lapp will introduce the films. Plays at 7 p.m. April 11 at Webster University. (RH)